The Crucible Quotes

If American literature has a few heroes, Miller is one of them. He refused to name names at the McCarthy hearings, and his play 'The Crucible' analysed the hearings in the context of a previous American mass psychosis, the Salem witch trials. ~ Jane Smiley

To be Christians finally, it is our duty and obligation to foster only those convictions that are justified by reason and experience, that have passed through the crucible of analysis, in a word, to act sensibly and not senselessly as in dreams or delirium, so as not to bring harm to a man, so as not to torment and ruin a man. Then, then it will be a real Christian deed, not only a mystical one, but a sensible and truly philanthropic deed ... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

David would enter the crucible of suffering where truly great servants of God are made. Perhaps you are there now. One of the most devastating realities of this kind of suffering is that often the one you thought would be your protector becomes the one who measures out the pain. All that longing for justice, for fairness, for having everything as it should be seems useless. As you think on the glory days of the past, your heart aches to turn back the clock, but you can't. In these moments it's tempting to believe that God has forgotten about us, or even worse, that He simply doesn't care - His favor has moved on. If you are there right now, my heart aches for you. No one signs up for this school of suffering, and yet the deep work that God does in this painful, lonely place is rarely produced anywhere else. ~ Sheila Walsh

The true Christian was intended by Christ to prove all things by the Word of God: all churches, all ministers, all teaching, all preaching, all doctrines, all sermons, all writings, all opinions, all practices. These are his marching orders. Prove all by the Word of God; measure all by the measure of the Bible; compare all with the standard of the Bible; weigh all in the balances of the Bible; examine all by the light of the Bible; test all in the crucible of the Bible. That which cannot abide the fire of the Bible, reject, refuse, repudiate, and cast away. This is the flag which he nailed to the mast. May it never be lowered! ~ John Wycliffe

Oh, of course, there is another meaning, another interesting interpretation of the word 'father,' which insists that my father, though a monster, though a villain to his children, is still my father simply because he begot me. But this meaning is, so to speak, a mystical one, which I do not understand with my reason, but can only accept by faith, or, more precisely, on faith, like many other things that I do not understand, but that religion nonetheless tells me to believe. But in that case let it remain outside the sphere of real life. While within the sphere of real life, which not only has its rights, but itself imposes great obligations--within this sphere, if we wish to be humane, to be Christians finally, it is our duty and obligation to foster only those convictions that are justified by reason and experience, that have passed through the crucible of analysis, in a word, to act sensibly and not senselessly as in dreams or delirium, so as not to bring harm to a man, so as not to torment and ruin a man. Then, then it will be a real Christian deed, not only a mystical one, but a sensible and truly philanthropic deed...let us decide the question as reason and the love of man dictate, and not as dictated by mystical notions. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

While within the sphere of real life, which not only has its rights, but itself imposes great obligations - within this sphere, if we wish to be humane, to be Christians finally, it is our duty and obligation to foster only those convictions that are justified by reason and experience, that have passed through the crucible of analysis, in a word, to act sensibly and not senselessly as in dreams or delirium, so as not to bring harm to a man, so as not to torment and ruin a man. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Of course, I'm not quite ready to forsake all the products of society, just yet. I have my clothes, my books, etc ... But more and more I can see myself leaving much of the rest behind - leaving their makers, and the crucible from which they proceed. If at times, after all, I might benefit by the rays of the sun, must I seek also to reside in its nuclear core? ~ Mark X.

Great men are made in the crucible of experiences ~ Osho Samuel Adetunji

Because all books ARE the Book of Job -- man in the crucible like Jack in the Box.... ~ Stanley Elkin

In the Western world, countries that were once the crucible of freedom are slipping remorselessly into a thinly disguised serfdom in which an ever higher proportion of your assets are annexed by the state as superlandlord. Big government is where nations go to die - not in Keynes' 'long run,' but sooner than you think. ~ Mark Steyn

Rome the crucible, but also the furnace, the boiling metal, the hammer, and the anvil as well, visible proof of the changes and repetitions of history, one place in the world where man will have most passionately lived. The great fire of Troy from which a fugitive had escaped, taking with him his aged father, his young son, and his household goods, had passed down to us that night in this flaming festival. I thought also, with something like awe, of conflagrations to come. These millions of lives past, present, and future, these structures newly arisen from ancient edifices and followed themselves by structures yet to be born, seemed to me to succeed each other in time like waves; by chance it was at my feet that night in this flaming festival. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

We were all forged in the crucible. ~ Gayle Forman

I am now at a time of life when I can look back on the past, for my soul has been refined in the crucible of interior and exterior trials. Now, like a flower after the storm, I can raise my head and see that the words of the Psalm are realised in me: "The Lord is my Shepherd and I shall want nothing. He hath set me in a place of pasture. He hath brought me up on the water of refreshment. He hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of justice for His own Name's sake. For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils for Thou are with me."[6] ~ Therese, Saint De Lisieux

Of all the ills that circumstance forces upon man, separation from a beloved object is, perhaps, the most salutary. Separation is the crucible wherein love undergoes the test absolute; in the fire of loss, grief softens to indifference or hardens to enduring need. ~ Katherine Cecil Thurston

Nowhere has God promised anyone, even His children, immunity from sorrow, suffering, and pain. This world is a "vale of tears," and disappointment and heartache are as inevitable as clouds and shadows. Suffering is often the crucible in which our faith is tested. Those who successfully come through the "furnace of affliction" are the ones who emerge "like gold tried in the fire. ~ Billy Graham

Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith - the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible. ~ William Osler

For Marx, nature is to be subjugated in order to obey history; for Nietzsche, nature is to be
obeyed in order to subjugate history. It is the difference between the Christian and the Greek. Nietzsche,
at least, foresaw what was going to happen: "Modern socialism tends to create a form of secular
Jesuitism, to make instruments of all men"; and again: "What we desire is well-being. ... As a result we
march toward a spiritual slavery such as has never been seen. . . . Intellectual Caesarism hovers over
every activity of the businessman and the philosopher." Placed in the crucible of Nietzschean philosophy,
rebellion, in the intoxication of freedom, ends in biological or historical Caesarism. The absolute negative had driven Stirner to deify crime simultaneously with the individual. But the absolute affirmative leads to
universalizing murder and mankind simultaneously. Marxism-Leninism has really accepted the burden
of Nietzsche's freewill by means of ignoring several Nietzschean virtues. The great rebel thus creates with
his own hands, and for his own imprisonment, the implacable reign of necessity. Once he had escaped
from God's prison, his first care was to construct the prison of history and of reason, thus putting the
finishing touch to the camouflage and consecration of the nihilism whose conquest he claimed. ~ Albert Camus

Ivo van Hove is directing The Crucible, and rehearses in quite an unusual way. We started rehearsals last week and dived straight into the first act, like, five minutes after we all turned up. No warm-ups. We were very intensely immersed in that whole world on day one. It was quite surreal because I've never done any theater before. ~ Saoirse Ronan

...small bits of our day are profoundly meaningful
because they are the site of our worship. The crucible of our formation is in the monotony of our daily routines. ~ Tish Harrison Warren

While all doctors treat diseases, neurosurgeons work in the crucible of identity: every operation on the brain is, by necessity, a manipulation of the substance of our selves, and every conversation with a patient undergoing brain surgery cannot help but confront this fact. In addition, to the patient and family, the brain surgery is usually the most dramatic event they have ever faced and, as such, has the impact of any major life event. At those critical junctures, the question is not simply whether to live or die but what kind of life is worth living. Would you trade your ability - or your mother's - to talk for a few extra months of mute life? The expansion of your visual blind spot in exchange for eliminating the small possibility of a fatal brain hemorrhage? Your right hand's function to stop seizures? How much neurologic suffering would you let your child endure before saying that death is preferable? Because the brain mediates our experience of the world, any neurosurgical problem forces a patient and family, ideally with a doctor as a guide, to answer this question: What makes life meaningful enough to go on living? ~ Paul Kalanithi

cleave not to faith when faith brings blood." - Rev. John Hale ~ Arthur Miller

We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Doing what you love, with those you love, is an adventurous type of success. The kind that can not be taken away, often discovered by those who have had much taken away, and saw it as an opportunity to re-access their path, and reset from the crucible of shared and beneficial dreams. ~ Tom Althouse

Life is the crucible that forges our soul. ~ Heidi Garrett

I was eleven years old, and I'd lost my mother, and my soul, and the Crucible gave me you. ~ Rainbow Rowell

A familiar image of a grim, frozen Russia is the babushka, the old woman, hunched and determined, head wrapped in a scarf. Her gnarled face stares out from old Ellis Island photographs and modern cable specials, and never fails to elicit awwwwws from concerned Westerners who'd love nothing more than to hug poor, helpless Granny and tell her that everything's going to be all right. That is misguided, and potentially hazardous. Women who had survived long enough to become grandmothers by the 1980s were Russia's rocks. Their generation had a hard life, even by the unforgiving standards of mother Russia. Forged from the crucible of wars, famines, and purges, the babushki had witnessed entire populations of husbands and sons vanish into the grave. These women were instilled with fierce matriarchal instinct, the notion that they were responsible for the welfare of all society, not just their kin, and underneath their kerchiefs the babushki watched, and listened, and remembered, and commanded. ~ Lev Golinkin

What victory would the Devil have to win a soul already bad? It is the best the Devil wants, and who is better than the minister." - Rev. John Hale ~ Arthur Miller

Theater is the crucible where we can create the dynamics of life without suffering the flames of their combustion. ~ Tom Althouse

When, without the bitterness of impotent rebellion, we have learnt both to resign ourselves to the outward rules of Fate and to recognise that the non-human world is unworthy of our worship, it becomes possible at last so to transform and refashion the unconscious universe, so to transmute it in the crucible of imagination, that a new image of shining gold replaces the old idol of clay. In all the multiform facts of the world--in the visual shapes of trees and mountains and clouds, in the events of the life of man, even in the very omnipotence of Death--the insight of creative idealism can find the reflection of a beauty which its own thoughts first made. In this way mind asserts its subtle mastery over the thoughtless forces of Nature. The more evil the material with which it deals, the more thwarting to untrained desire, the greater is its achievement in inducing the reluctant rock to yield up its hidden treasures, the prouder its victory in compelling the opposing forces to swell the pageant of its triumph. Of all the arts, Tragedy is the proudest, the most triumphant; for it builds its shining citadel in the very centre of the enemy's country, on the very summit of his highest mountain; from its impregnable watchtowers, his camps and arsenals, his columns and forts, are all revealed; within its walls the free life continues, while the legions of Death and Pain and Despair, and all the servile captains of tyrant Fate, afford the burghers of that dauntless city new spectacl ~ Bertrand Russell

Kylar, in the crucible of tragedy, explanations fail. When you stand before a tragedy and tell yourself that there is no sense to it, doesn't your heart break? I think that must be as hard for you as it is for me when I scream at God and demand to know why - and he says nothing. We will both survive this, Kylar. The difference is, on the other side I will have hope. ~ Brent Weeks

Long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life. People who stay also grow. People who leave do not grow. We all know people who are consumed with spiritual wanderlust. But we never get to know them very well because they cannot seem to stay put. They move along from church to church, ever searching for a congregation that will better satisfy their felt needs. Like trees repeatedly transplanted from soil to soil, these spiritual nomads fail to put down roots and seldom experience lasting and fruitful growth in their Christian lives. ~ Joseph H. Hellerman

He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him! ~ Arthur Miller

It is not through the way in which someone speaks about God that I can see whether that person has passed through the crucible of Divine Love, but through the way the person speaks to me about things here on earth. ~ Simone Weil

As any opera fan knows, lawyers and judges do not fare well in most operas. Just consider the productions of 'Andrea Chenier,' 'Aida, Norma,' 'Billy Budd,' 'Peter Grimes,' 'The Crucible,' 'Lost in the Stars,' 'The Marriage of Figaro,' 'The Makropulos Case' and Wagner's 'Ring' cycle. Around 1810, the theme of justice emerged in opera. ~ Karen DeCrow

For example, I can doubt that 2 + 2 = 4; however, my doubting does not change the equation. When I test out that formula and find that it is true, then that becomes my reality. How can anything become real until it is tested in the crucible of doubt? ~ David W. Earle

I remember when I was doing 'The Crucible' on Broadway with Laura Linney, and Arthur Miller had been in rehearsal with us and was on stage on opening night. She turned to me during the curtain call and said, 'Let's make sure we remember this.' ~ John Benjamin Hickey

Whereas literalists and fundamentalists tend to choose one pole of any dilemma or opposition, whereas modern political parties and religious groups tend towards demonizing each other, the creative individual must be born again and again in the crucible created by the tension between opposing instincts, conflicted feelings, and contrasting ideas. ~ Michael Meade

Sudan is not really a country at all, but many. A composite layers, like a genetic fingerprint of memories that were once fluid, but have since crystallized out from the crucible of possibility ~ Jamal Mahjoub

War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtues superior to andreia, to manly valor. ~ Steven Pressfield

Above even our physical well-being, a central value is keeping the state out of the private realm - our "persons, houses, papers, and effects," as the Fourth Amendment puts it. We do so precisely because that realm is the crucible of so many of the attributes typically associated with the quality of life - creativity, exploration, intimacy. ~ Glenn Greenwald

Your past is handing you a tool you can use to leap into your future: the crucible moments from your own life. The power you need is in looking back to look forward. ~ Bill Jensen

I think He intends to try you like gold in the crucible, so as to number you amongst His most faithful servants. Therefore you must lovingly embrace all occasions of suffering, considering them as precious tokens of His love. To suffer in silence and without complaint is what He asks of you. ~ Margaret Mary Alacoque

Surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character. ~ Tony Robbins

This other man he could never see in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal. The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men's fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Contrary to what I had thought, I did not need easing circumstances, relief from difficulty, and distance from pain in order to be free. I was learning that the freedom Jesus secured for me is not freedom from pain and suffering here and now. Rather, it's freedom from bitterness, anger, fear, resentment, self-pity, offense, and hopelessness in the crucible of present pain and suffering; it is freedom from my burdensome sense of "I deserve better," the encumbrance of entitlement. I was realizing that only the gospel can free us from the enslaving pressure to defend ourselves. That's real freedom - God-sized freedom! ~ Tullian Tchividjian

The case for the humanities is not hard to make, though it can be difficult
to such an extent have we been marginalized, so long have we acceded to that marginalization
not to sound either defensive or naive. The humanities, done right, are the crucible in which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do, but how to be. Their method is confrontational, their domain unlimited, their "product" not truth but the reasoned search for truth, their "success" something very much like Frost's momentary stay against confusion. ~ Mark Slouka

If the most precious are tried in the fire, are we to escape the crucible? If the diamond must be vexed upon the wheel, are we to be made perfect without suffering? ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The war between the centrifuge of knowledge and the centripetal pull of power remains the prime conflict in all economies. Reconciling the two impulses is a new economics, an economics that puts free will and the innovating entrepreneur not on the periphery but at the center of the system. It is an economics of surprise that distributes power as it extends knowledge. It is an economics of disequilibrium and disruption that tests its inventions in the crucible of a competitive marketplace. It is an economics that accords with the constantly surprising fluctuations of our lives. ~ George Gilder

I have to get stronger, harder, and faster. The only way to get hard enough to walk the Apocalypse Road is in the crucible of battle. ~ Cedric Nye

It's an heirloom, isn't it?"

... "I got it from my father."

The tutor ran his hand along the sheathed blade. "This is a remarkable weapon - a knight's sword - tarnished with time and travel. You don't use it as often as the others. The bastard and short sword are tools to you, but this - ah - this is something else - something revered. It lays concealed in a paltry sheath, covered in clothes not its own. It doesn't belong there. This sword belongs to another time and place. It is part of a grand and glorious world where knights were different, loftier - virtuous. It rests in this false scabbard because the proper one has been lost, or perhaps, it waits for a quest yet to be finished. It longs for that single moment when it can shine forth in all its brilliance. When dream and destiny meet on a clear field, then and only then will it find its purpose. When it faces that honorable cause - that one worthy and desperate challenge for which it was forged and on which so much depends - it will find peace in the crucible of struggle. For good or ill, it will ring true or break. But the wandering, the waiting, the hiding will at last be over. This sword waits for the day when it can save the kingdom and win the lady. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

When we look for the origins of all humanity today, let's not just look at Europe, because I think Africa was the cradle, the crucible that created us as Homo sapiens. ~ Donald Johanson

Rewriting is the crucible where books are born. ~ Cathryn Louis

Belief creates, Arathan. So you have been taught. The god cannot exist until it is worshipped, until it is given shape, personality. It is made in the crucible of faith. ~ Steven Erikson

You know, the crisis passes, the crucible cools, and there we are, slightly improved, not much altered. ~ Amy Bloom

They did not arrive alone but were attended by six cohorts, an assortment of dark-suited men so stern and judgmental of mien as to resemble the male ensemble from a musical version of The Crucible. ~ Joe Keenan

Notice how the crucible of the story changes those who listen to it, those who are within it, and the person who is telling it, all at the same time. ~ Cressida Cowell

One of life's greatest paradoxes is that it's in the crucible of pain and suffering that we become tender. Not all pain and suffering, certainly. If that were the case, the whole world would be tender, since no one escapes pain and suffering. To these elements must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love and the willingness to remain vulnerable. Together they lead to wisdom and tenderness. ~ Brennan Manning

The Crucible became by far my most frequently produced play, both abroad and at home. Its meaning is somewhat different in different places and moments. I can almost tell what the political situation in a country is when the play is suddenly a hit there it is either a warning of tyranny on the way or a reminder of tyranny just past. ~ Arthur Miller

In my last year of drama school, I was Abigail in 'The Crucible' and Nina in 'The Seagull,' and I did some Shakespeare with the RSC. That's what casting directors saw me in, and I got put up for a lot of period drama auditions. I always get told I suit the costumes. I don't think I have a very modern-looking face. ~ Kimberley Nixon

What we shared was no more than a fragment of a time long dead. Yet memories remained, warm memories that remained with me like lights from the past. And I would carry those lights in the brief interval before death grabbed me and tossed me back into the crucible of nothingness. ~ Haruki Murakami

A mage's soul is forged in the crucible of the magic ~ Margaret Weis

There's very little greatness in this world, but in the crucible of quality there's a special corner reserved for Van Halen. ~ Bob Lefsetz

More accustomed to relying upon himself to shape events, he took the greatest control of the process leading up to the nomination, displaying a fierce ambition, an exceptional political acumen, and a wide range of emotional strengths, forged in the crucible of personal hardship, that took his unsuspecting rivals by surprise. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

I am but God's finger, John. If he would condemn Elizabeth, she will be condemned. ~ Abigail Williams

Be not afraid life with all its despair, pain and unhappiness is just a crucible wherein your brighter dreams are conceived, shaped and born ~ Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

Wisdom that isn't distilled in our own crucible can't help us. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Parenting is a crucible, filled with tears and anxiety and laughter. It will pierce your soul. And it will heal you. It is all those things. And more. That's love. ~ Josh Shipp

It needs a cold wife to prompt lechery. ~ Elizabeth Proctor

New York is large, glamorous, easy-going, kindly and incurious, but above all it is a crucible - because it is large enough to be incurious. ~ Ford Madox Ford

Calling upon our crucible moments allows us to transcend our own limitations. Those moments create completely new possibilities within each of us. ~ Bill Jensen

They would continue to live in New Tiamaat, orbiting Crucible. ~ Alastair Reynolds

HALE, with a tasty love of intellectual pursuit ~ Arthur Miller

We burn a hot fire here; it melts down all concealment. ~ Arthur Miller

Oh,Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer. ~ Arthur Miller

Look, this job has always been a crucible of conflict. ~ Bruce Babbitt

In being with dying, we arrive at a natural crucible of what it means to love and be loved. And we can ask ourselves this: Knowing that death is inevitable, what is most precious today? ~ Joan Halifax